Hello

9 December 2016

Here's how it works: The Recent Releases chart brings together critical reaction to new albums from more than 50 sources worldwide. It's updated daily. Albums qualify with 5 reviews, and drop out after 6 weeks into the longer timespan charts.

8.0 |
Blurt

8.0 |
Rave Magazine

The album has been perhaps unflatteringly compared with Pink Floyd’s elegiac swansong The Final Cut, and although it shares that record’s penchant for melancholic progressive rock, it’s much less of a slog
Read Review

7.99390

7.9 |
Pitchfork

It's an album you can spend time with and understand as a whole work, and one that grows on you with each listen, revealing yet more detail and nuance
Read Review

7.99391

7.9 |
Pitchfork

It's an album you can spend time with and understand as a whole work, and one that grows on you with each listen, revealing yet more detail and nuance
Read Review

7.09662

7.0 |
PopMatters

Listening to The Golden Archipelago, you’ll realize that the last three Shearwater albums really are all one big movement. This is both the dramatic climax and the cathartic denouement
Read Review

7.09079

7.0 |
Clash

Meiburg’s voice is a wonder throughout, wonderfully fragile on ‘Hidden Lakes’, tearing it up on ‘Corridors’. A wonderful album
Read Review

7.09082

7.0 |
music OMH

The Golden Archipelago is an admirable achievement: a project that has been meticulously prepared and executed with passion and flair
Read Review

6.08985

6.0 |
Uncut

Print edition only

6.09025

6.0 |
The Irish Times

The overall ambience is one of understated, mystifying and occasionally eerie pagan folk. It’s an album that requires persistence, but one that’s nonetheless compelling
Read Review

6.08792

6.0 |
The List

There are gorgeous moments ... but the songwriting doesn’t always live up to the concept, despite plenty of skill and passion in the execution
Read Review

6.08913

6.0 |
Mojo

Print edition only

6.08919

6.0 |
Q

Print edition only

6.010758

6.0 |
Eye Weekly

Jonathan Meiburg’s crystalline falsetto is better served ... in the dynamic piano ballads and new-wave colourings that make up the disc’s stronger second half
Read Review

4.09691

4.0 |
The Quietus

The Golden Archipelago is a folk album so overwrought and worthy that it sounds like one of Christy Moore's hangovers
Read Review